Alimento Mori
by TNOandXadric
Summary: There is no leaving Storybrooke and there is no ending, fairytale or otherwise. Book two in the Reclamation Arc; Hatter after the ultimate decree.
1. 8:15: Drowning

**AN: **For the uninitiated, this is a sequel to _Monachopsis_. Read that first.

I've made some pretty significant changes to the way _Once Upon a Time_ magic works (giving it internal consistency and making it less all-powerful, mostly). Due to the nature of these changes, this is an AU of _OUaT_ itself and backstories from the show will be, in some cases, quite different.

Note also that updates will NOT be as frequent as they were for _Monachopsis._ I'm back in school and it's kicking me in the teeth (and it's glorious).

**Warnings: **Character death, attempted suicide and self-harm, hallucinated violence.

* * *

**Part One: 8:15**

**Drowning**

Ruby takes her morning run by the docks; she likes the smell of salt in the air and the sound of water flowing just beneath her feet. Usually it's peaceful, and her interactions with other people are limited to a friendly nod or a wave. Today, she's just coming to the end of her usual route and readying herself for the walk back to Granny's when someone shouts, "There's someone in the water!"

There's a general rush in the direction of the call, but Ruby has long legs and her heart-rate's already up, so she gets to the low wooden dock fast enough to see the woman in the water—she's so pale and still that for a horrible moment, Ruby thinks she's already gone. The thump of shoes and then a jacket hitting the dock snaps her back to the reality of the situation, and she's barely processed that when one of the fishermen—Miguel, Ruby thinks his name is—dives.

The spray splashes up into her face, and Ruby blinks furiously while Miguel resurfaces a few feet from the woman—she has to be still alive, she _has _to—and cups her head so her mouth is above the water before kicking back toward them. They all shout encouragement; Ruby gets on her knees with a few others to help pull her out of the water before Miguel hoists himself up as well.

"She's breathing," Ruby says; this close, she can see the woman's chest rising and falling, faint but steady. The receding panic makes it easier to think clearly, and she takes a deep gulp of air. "Someone call for an ambulance—we shouldn't move her any more in case there's something wrong with her spine—"

"There's one on the way already," says the older man, Greg, who runs the tackle shop across the street. "I called as soon as I heard the shouting."

"Good," Ruby says, smoothing down the woman's sodden red hair because it feels better to be doing something. She's dressed from head to toe in red and looks like someone straight out of a circus—it's a wonder she was floating at all, with that skirt. Ruby shrugs out of her own light windbreaker, but another fisherman hands her a much heavier coat to drape over the woman's torso instead. "Where did she come from?" he asks.

Ruby can hear sirens in the distance, and she rocks back on her heels, frowning. "I guess we'll have to wait until she wakes up," she says.

* * *

It's an unpleasant way to go, drowning. The body knows it's happening and goes straight into shock—the victim is silent, still and vertical in the water while all energy is diverted to continuing to breathe. Once the mouth fills with water, the epiglottis seals off the airways and then it's only a matter of time before unconsciousness follows. The body sinks and the victim experiences hypoxic convulsions and then cardiac arrest. Clinical death follows shortly.

The woman rushed into the ER from the docks this morning shows no signs that she's experienced any of this. There doesn't appear to be any water in her lungs and her heart beats normally. Whale understands that she was unconscious but floating horizontally before Miguel Barros fished her out of the water.

About an hour after they determine she's not in any immediate danger, she opens her eyes. They're blue but for a grey ring around the outer edge—arcus cornealis. She looks too young for it. "You're lucky," he tells her. "You managed not to drown, but a few hours longer in the bay and you'd have been hypothermic."

She blinks at him, once, twice, and then her eyes flick to the side. "Where am I?" Her voice is a painful rasp—so she did inhale water. Whale frowns.

"Storybrooke General Hospital," he says.

The woman closes her eyes, a faint crease forming between her eyebrows. "Storybrooke?"

"Maine," Whale supplies. "Can you tell me your name?"

The tip of her tongue flicks out to wet her lips, which are starkly red against her waxy skin. "Madeline… Knight," she says, sounding unsure.

"We need your real name for our records and for insurance, ma'am," Whale says.

Madeline glares at him. "That is my real name, and I haven't got insurance," she says waspishly, then brightens. "Or any money, for that matter, so you can kick me out right now—"

"That won't be necessary." Whale jumps at this new voice, darting a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure he hasn't misidentified it. Mayor Mills gazes back at him, her face impassive. "I'll cover the costs for Miss Knight."

"Madam Mayor," Whale says, resisting the urge to fidget. He stuffs his hands in the pockets of his lab coat instead. "I didn't expect to see you here. Are you a relative?"

She raises both eyebrows in what, on any other face, would be an expression of perfect innocence. On Mayor Mills, it manages to look predatory. "Do I need a reason to play the good Samaritan now and then?" she asks.

"Perhaps not," Whale says, and the mayor smiles in approval.

Madeline lets out a weak snigger. "Of course you do," she croaks. "Well, I refuse to feel indebted to you, so you can just—not." She tries to sit up and, to Whale's surprise, manages it with an ease that belies her condition only a few hours ago.

"You really shouldn't—" Whale begins, but Madeline waves him off.

"I've had worse and I can't pay," she says. "Don't tell me what to do." She totters toward the exit, not seeming bothered by the hospital gown or her lack of shoes, but she's only halfway there when her left leg buckles. Whale catches her before she can fall; her shoulder jars against his and she spits out a name—Dodgson, Whale thinks, but the syllables are garbled together and he can't be sure.

"Why don't you just relax," he says, steering her back to the bed. Madeline twists herself out of his grip and flops down instead of letting him help her, glaring up at him defiantly. "Look, you're obviously not in a state to walk out of here without potentially hurting yourself, and since it's my job to keep you healthy I've got no compunctions about calling in some nurses to restrain you, if necessary. All right?"

Madeline's lips curl back from her teeth, but she doesn't move. "I want my clothes," she says.

"We sent them to get cleaned," Whale says. "You can have them when they come back." This, at least, mollifies her enough to stop acting like a petulant child, and she swings her legs back onto the bed. "Now, I also need to know how you ended up in the bay, if you can remember."

"For your records," she says flatly. Whale nods. "I fell in."

"When?" Madeline shrugs. "How?"

"I suppose I must have hit my head," she snaps, "because it's all coming up blank." She squirms, tugging the thin blanket out from beneath her and wrapping it around her shoulders; Whale can see goosebumps erupting along her bare arms. "I don't feel like talking anymore."

Whale forces a smile. "Well. I'll give you a some time, then." He turns on his heel and walks for the exit, exchanging a perfunctory goodbye with Mayor Mills before leaving. There are other patients he's scheduled to see soon, so he stops a passing nurse to tell her to check in on Madeline Knight in ten minutes or so before heading to his office to pick up the appropriate files.

* * *

As soon as the doctor's gone, Miss Knight slumps into herself, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on them. Regina studies her intently; she's very tall but otherwise looks innocuous, but there's something about her that isn't quite right. Standing this close to her makes Regina's fingertips tingle in a way reminiscent of magic, although the sensation is too faint to be identical. Still, it's worrying.

"Where did you come from?" she asks after a moment during which Miss Knight gave no indication of knowing that Regina was still in the room. Miss Knight peers up at her with peculiar blue-and-white eyes—Regina has never met a magic-user who didn't have strange eyes. Even her own went from warm brown to almost black when she started casting spells regularly. The hair on the back of her neck prickles.

"Queens," Miss Knight says at length.

"As in New York?"

Miss Knight shrugs. "Sure."

Regina knows she must be lying about this just as she's lying about her name; there's no magic in this land, and she'd need magic to cross the curse's borders. "This will be much easier if you tell the truth," she says.

"I am telling the truth," Miss Knight says quietly. She cocks her head to one side, birdlike. "Help me get out of here and I'll tell you another one."

By midnight, no one but her will remember that Miss Knight ever came to the hospital. Regina wonders if Miss Knight knows that too. "I'll find you a wheelchair," she offers.

"I can walk," Miss Knight says, wriggling off the bed again as if to prove her point. She seems steady enough now, but Regina catches her elbow just in case, although she hopes that it won't become necessary; despite Regina's three-inch heels, Miss Knight is taller than her by several inches and would be awkward to support if she fell. Miss Knight pastes on a patently false smile that nevertheless seems to put the occasional passing nurse at ease, and they slip out through an emergency exit with a broken alarm.

She expects Miss Knight to show some sign of discomfort once they're outside and she doesn't have smooth linoleum to walk on, but Miss Knight doesn't so much as slow down. Regina helps her into her car, and they drive away from the hospital in silence. "I can lend you some clothes," Regina ventures to say as they turn onto the main road toward Mifflin Street. "They'll be too short, but it's better than wandering around in a stolen patient gown and blanket." Miss Knight doesn't respond, so Regina adds, "My name is Regina Mills."

Miss Knight fixes her with an unsettling stare. "And you're the mayor," she says.

"Yes." She maneuvers the car onto Mifflin Street, and Miss Knight turns away to watch the houses pass by, her breathing turning ragged as they pull into Regina's driveway.

"Any relation to a Cora Mills?" Regina fumbles the keys as she tugs them out of the ignition, and when she looks up, Miss Knight is staring at her again. "You have the same eyes," she murmurs.

"How do you know my mother?" Regina asks, her throat tight while her mind races through the possibilities. Miss Knight looks about her own age, which means she's likely not a former ally of Mother's—she must be from Wonderland—one of the heartless, perhaps? It would explain how unresponsive Miss Knight is—Mother kept enough of them that it would be too much effort to make them seem human—

"She sent me here," Miss Knight says. "I tried to stage a coup…"

Regina blinks, trying to process this. "She didn't just kill you?"

Miss Knight says, "I think she wanted me to suffer." She opens the door and gets out, shuffling a little on the pavement and clutching the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Regina follows her and coaxes her toward the house; she seems suddenly reluctant to move forward.

"Nothing's right here," Miss Knight whispers as Regina shepherds her through the front door. "Everything's so—so—"

"Euclidean?" Regina suggests dryly.

"It's _wrong_," Miss Knight says. "And it _hurts_."

That makes a certain amount of sense, Regina supposes; she had only been to Wonderland once herself, but she remembers the landscapes so over-saturated with color that it made her eyes sting, the mind-bending way everything wavered like a mirage and natural laws weren't laws so much as optional suggestions. It gave her a headache just to think about; coming the other way must be equally unpleasant. The long-buried guilt over sending Mother there resurfaces with a pang. "I'm sorry," she says. Miss Knight snorts bitterly.

Regina takes her up to the bedroom and lets her pick what she wants—a dark-grey turtleneck and the longest pair of pants that Regina owns, although they'll probably still be too short for Miss Knight. She doesn't protest when Miss Knight takes her heaviest coat, either. "You can shower, if you'd like," Regina says. Miss Knight says nothing, but when Regina tells her where to find the bathroom, she shambles toward it and locks the door behind her. A few seconds later, Regina hears the water start.

* * *

Water drives into her back like whips. She sits, lets the onslaught scour away the flesh on her back, pulverize her lungs and turn what little remains of her heart into mince meat. Around her, everything is rigid and unforgiving lines, ironed to razor-like precision by this world's overzealous gravity. The Protocol can do nothing to fix it; what's left of it rests limply in her mind, lifeless.

Morris crouches on the edge of the tub, his eyes boring holes through her, blood on his mouth. Hers or his, she doesn't know. She reaches for him, misjudges the distance, and slams her hand into the side of the bath instead. The impact ricochets up her arm, her bones splintering, puncturing the skin. She watches as foul-smelling liquid oozes out, thick and viscous, more pus than blood.

"That's not good enough," Morris says. He catches her forearm, squeezes. Something too hoarse to be a shriek escapes her throat as fire floods her arm and the skin begins to blister and slough away. Her forehead presses against the tub's side and she writhes; Morris only grips tighter.

"_Please_," she whimpers. Bile boils up her throat, filling her lungs when she tries to keep breathing.

A knock on the door, and Morris vanishes. Regina's voice says, "Miss Knight? Is everything all right?"

Hatter—Madeline—_Hatter_ blinks. She uncurls her own fingers from her arm, examining the skin, unbroken except for the reddish crescents where her nails were. Regina knocks again, repeats the question louder. Hatter shuts off the water. The towel scrapes over her skin like sandpaper, leaving it raw and too small, stretched over her bones until it threatens to split open at any moment. Her borrowed clothes are no better, stiff and harsh as they slip through her hands, steel wool instead of cashmere and polyester.

The doorknob slips out of her hands, twice, three times, four, before she remembers to unlock it first. Regina stands on the other side, her expression carefully-composed concern. "Kill me," Hatter whispers, and Regina falters.

"I'm not going to do that, Miss Knight," Regina says.

She flinches when Hatter seizes her arms, shakes her, clings to keep herself upright. "Please—_please_—" A spasm buckles her spine, and her entire weight dangles from Regina's forearms for a moment, before Regina sets her down and props her agains the wall.

It's Percy, this time, who appears, dragging herself along by her arms, her legs useless, crushed, half of her femur protruding from what used to be her thigh. "Help me, Red," she wheezes, reaching out with a mutilated hand, chunks of skin missing where the Jabberwock's breath whittled them away. Hatter recoils.

"Miss Knight!"

She struggles to focus on only the alarm in Regina's eyes, dark like the Queen's but not pitiless, and not Percy's death throes, but she can't help choking on the stench of rotting meat or whimpering when Percy's hand flops weakly against her leg. "Please," Percy gurgles. "Red…"

"Leave me alone," Hatter groans, burying her face in her hands. "I can't—I can't—" She breaks off with a sob, her joints grinding against each other at the slightest movement, the weight of this world's atmosphere driving her into the ground until her flesh ruptured from the pressure. "It _hurts_—please, pleaseplease_please _just—"

Hands wrap around her wrists, vice-like, and wrench them away from her head. For a moment she trembles and then, in a rush, the agony slips away, leaving nothing but a cold, hollow feeling behind. Regina is speaking—Hatter can hear the noise, the intonations of worry, but the words make no sense; they flap around her head and nest in her hair, crawl down over her cheekbones to peer into her eyes. She wonders vaguely if this is how Morris hears.

Morris…

Regina's words turn into ferrets and whip out of sight, down tunnels too small for her to follow. She tries anyway, paring herself down until there's little enough of her left to wriggle down the passages. They constrict, tighter and tighter so she can't breathe, cutting off her light. She welcomes the darkness.

* * *

It occurs to Regina shortly after Miss Knight slumps into unconsciousness that she has no idea whether Wonderlanders can survive long-term outside of their world. True, Jefferson has suffered no ill effects that she didn't intend in the fourteen years they've been here, but then, Jefferson isn't, to her knowledge, a Wonderlander by birth. After some struggle, she gets Miss Knight onto the bed in never-before-used guest-room and tugs the comforter over her. If she is going to die, the least Regina can do is make her as comfortable as possible.

She sits on the end of the bed, watching the faint rise-and-fall of Miss Knight's chest. Another victim of her mother; Regina picks a loose thread on the comforter and wonders how it happened, how the coup failed, whether there was anyone left in Wonderland who would mourn for the woman in front of her as there had never been for Regina herself.


	2. 8:15: Tea House

**Tea House**

Though she doesn't wake again, Miss Knight lingers through the rest of the afternoon and night, and when she finally shuffles into the kitchen while Regina is making pancakes the next morning, there's a lucidity in her eyes that was missing before. She sits at the counter and picks unenthusiastically at the plate of pancakes that Regina sets in front of her. "What happened to you, yesterday?" Regina asks.

"I was the Hatter," Miss Knight whispers. "The mercury is worse here. I suppose…" But she closes her eyes and doesn't finish whatever she was planning to say, and Regina decides it's best not to press her. "What is this place?" she asks after a while. "The doctor told me Storybrooke, and Maine, but that means less than nothing to me. It must be Aboveground, because you knew of Queens."

"Aboveground?"

Miss Knight blinks. "Where the first Alice came from. England. Oxford. And all the ones that followed. A man named Dodgson orchestrated it."

"Yes, that's this world," Regina says. "Across the Atlantic Ocean." She gestures in the general direction of the bay, and Miss Knight spins her fork between her fingers. "We're in a country called the United States. Maine is one of them. Queens is in New York, another, south of here. Why do you know it?"

Miss Knight's hands clench into fists, but she takes a shuddery breath and relaxes again. "Another Alice came from there," she says. "And Storybrooke?"

"Is a lie," Regina says. It's a relief to speak of it at last. "An entire world displaced and brought here, then frozen in time. Everything resets at midnight and no one remembers but me. And you, now."

"Why?"

Regina can't meet her eyes anymore. "There was a curse," she says.

"You cast it," Miss Knight guesses. Regina nods. "Why?"

"I just… needed something to go right for me. For _once_." She glowers up at Miss Knight, a silent dare for her to claim a moral high ground.

Miss Knight reaches across the counter to take her hand, her fingernails digging in too hard. "Yes," she says, with a softness belied by her grip on Regina's hand. "Yes, I know the feeling. It doesn't work, you know."

"I kept thinking there must be a way, if…"

"If you keep fighting hard enough or searching long enough or…" Miss Knight shakes her head. "I know. But even success is nothing but a prolonged style of failure." She releases Regina's hand and doesn't elaborate.

"I won't believe that," Regina says.

Miss Knight stares at her bleakly. "You will." She picks up her fork again and stirs the uneaten pancakes around on her plate for a moment. "What is there to be done, then?"

"Nothing but wait for it to be over. I find that reading helps to pass the time, or…"

The plate of pancakes clatters as Miss Knight shoves it away and stutters to her feet, her face twisting horribly. "Things ought to be done for more than just to stave off the monotony," she says, agitated now, beginning to pace across the kitchen in a stuttering sort of march. "Boredom isn't an emotion, it's an _invention_, and a disgusting one at that. What an awful thing, to be dull, don't you agree?"

"Better than being miserable," Regina says.

"Tedium _is _misery. The worst kind. Do you know why?" She whirls on Regina, her eyes blazing. Regina shakes her head. "Because it brings with it listlessness, and there is nothing so despicable than to wallow in misery without bothering to _do _anything about it. No, don't talk. You said it yourself: Nothing can be done in this _hateful_ little town that will last beyond the sunset. _That_ is the most vicious torture imaginable." She stares, bewildered. "Why did you inflict it on yourself?"

"There was nothing left for me at home," Regina tells her. "The royal family stripped me of my ability to fight back and then refused to have the decency to do anything further. They sent me back to my father's home to live out the rest of my days in humiliation. What else could I do?"

"I don't know," Miss Knight whispers. "I don't know." She joins Regina at the counter, her shoulders hunching until her neck is invisible. "Can you make things change, a little?"

"Nothing too dramatic," Regina says. "My access to magic is limited to the objects in my vault, and I have to burn them to use them. What did you have in mind?"

"Give me a tea house," Miss Knight murmurs. "Give me a place to brew my tea and I can make it… bearable."

There's a computer repair shop on main street that is always closed, a petty annoyance which amused her for the first few weeks before that, too, lost its interest. "We can start right now, if you're ready," Regina says. "We can set up the shop today and I'll arrange for everything to last after midnight; the tea will have to come from outside, which is a bit more difficult, but doable. I have an address in Augusta that's linked to my doorway, and once it's here and incorporated into the curse, you'll never run out of it because it will reset every night with everything else."

"I'll write you out a list," Miss Knight says. "For the kinds to buy."

Regina gives her a pen and a sheet of paper before leaving for the office; when she comes back during her lunch break to check on Miss Knight, the list is finished; the paper is covered, back and front, in minuscule, jittery handwriting. "I left off the ones that are blended with plants that only grow in Wonderland," Miss Knight says, looking oddly shy.

"I'll put in the order this afternoon," Regina tells her, and Miss Knight, for the first time, offers her a genuine smile.

* * *

The new restaurant that opened on main street today has a PETS WELCOME sign displayed prominently in its window, and it's so rare for any establishment in town to be friendly to Pongo that Archie takes a break from his usual morning routine; Granny Lucas, he's sure, won't begrudge him _one _day of having breakfast elsewhere.

Inside, the Glass Tree Teahouse is a riot of color, all patchwork tablecloths and wallpaper of a poisonous green, patterned with white teapots. A few people are already inside, sipping from mismatched cups or bemusedly examining the artwork hung on the walls: Tenniel prints and inked sketches of trees, from what Archie can see.

Archie expects the owner of such a place to be equally colorful, but the woman behind the counter is a study in contrasts instead: dark grey clothes, pasty skin, and fiery red hair. She coos over Pongo and introduces herself as Madeline Knight.

"Archie Hopper," Archie replies, holding out his hand. Hers is icy and rougher than he expects.

"I moved here from New York City," she tells him off-handedly while he examines the menu board, which boasts of more types of tea than Archie even knew _existed_.

"Must be a real change of pace," Archie says, and Madeline offers him a smile that makes the hair on the back of his neck prickle; it's all teeth and eyes so cold they'd give Mayor Mills a pause.

"You have no idea," she says.

He orders cardamom tea and a bagel and lox, and when Madeline's hands start to shake as she prepares it for him, he catches himself wondering whether it's a physiological problem or a psychological one. It's plausible that uprooting herself from New York to this tiny little town is indicative of more than just a desire for change, and that _smile_…

Madeline hands him his order and offers up another plastic grin when she takes his money in return, and Archie retreats to a table by the window with Pongo at his heels.

* * *

The last of the customers filter out as the light begins to dim; Hatter makes herself a cup of Moroccan mint that tastes less fresh than it would have in Wonderland and sits at the counter to drink. Regina comes in at the end of the first cup, the doorbells jingling in her wake. "You haven't closed yet? It's nearly dark," she says.

"I'm not going to close," Hatter says. "I couldn't turn anyone away."

"You have to sleep sometime," Regina says.

Hatter shrugs; there's nothing she can say in response to that. "It'll all stick? The tea and everything?" she asks instead.

"It's written into the curse now," Regina says smoothly. "It took a pair of seven-league boots to finish everything, but it's here permanently now." Hatter pours a second cup of tea and offers it to her; Regina takes it and sips, looking first tentative and then approving. "It's good," she says.

Hatter merely nods and examines the dregs of her own cup.

"I could read them for you," Regina says after a moment. "The tea leaves, I mean. It might take your mind off…"

There's no reason to disagree, so Hatter hands over her cup without a word. Regina swirls the remnants of the tea a few times before upending the cup in its saucer. After turning the cup back over, she goes quiet for a moment, rotating the cup slowly while she studies it. Hatter picks at her sleeve and examines the redness of the skin underneath while she waits.

At last, Regina says, "Well, it's unpleasant."

Hatter can't quite stop the mirthless chuckle that tugs its way out of her throat. "Of course it is. Go on."

"Well, someone's looking out for you," Regina says. "And someone else is trying to trick you, possibly as a result of greed." Morris smirks at her from over Regina's shoulder before dissolving again, and Hatter flinches. Regina offers her a sympathetic look which does nothing to sooth the stabbing feeling in her abdomen. "Danger in the near future, or an antagonist—more direct than before, I think. Trouble, and… sadness, followed by a warning to trust your friends—"

Hatter snorts. "If I had any."

"Well, then, you're even more doomed," Regina says placidly, handing the tea cup back.

"You really got all that out of this?" Hatter asks, frowning at the damp clumps of leaves.

"It's a party trick," Regina tells her, "and about as useful as you'd expect from one. That is, it's accurate enough if you know what you're doing, but it's vague by nature."

"I'd have thought magic that could transplant worlds and keep people alive without hearts would be able to read the future accurately," Hatter mutters.

Regina shrugs. "Magic—especially powerful magic–comes with a hefty price. Think of it like a seesaw. Doing magic is like pushing the right spot on the lever to make one end go down, but the other end has to come up for that to happen. More force in one direction makes for a more dramatic result on the other end. Mending a broken dish means breaking something else, and so on. The skill comes in making sure that the thing that breaks is less important than the dish, instead of your own hand. Something like accurately and precisely predicting the future…" She shakes her head. "Doing anything that effects the mind like that is all but begging for some kind of mental illness. You might lose the ability to distinguish past from present from future, for example."

"What did you pay for the curse?" Hatter asks.

Regina drops her gaze, staring into her own half-full teacup for a time. "My father's life," she says at last, "and awareness of every second that doesn't truly pass. The others, at least, forget." She smiles bitterly. "And the destruction of the world we left behind and what little morality I could cling to there."

Hatter sets the cup down; the clink sounds too loud in the emptiness of the teahouse. "I slaughtered hundreds of people," she says. "Seven years after I… started existing. They were… It doesn't matter. And I still don't know why I did, exactly, only that it felt like the only option at the time. I…" Her chest burns, and she hunts along the icy countertop for something to distract herself with. She finds a rag and scrubs at imaginary spills.

"They called me the Evil Queen," Regina mutters. "Even after I was deposed, it was always the Evil Queen. The ones who overthrew me, they kept referring to themselves as the Prince and the Princess even after the coronation, as if I'd tainted the monarchy just by being a part of it and they wanted nothing to do with the title I had held."

"They loved me because I made them," Hatter says. She can see the Protocol swarming over her hands, silver and reflective and sharp, though it still lies motionless in her head. It fades slowly while she blinks. "My followers, I mean. Rewrites. I took out everything they were and replaced it with adoration and devotion, made it so their entire universe revolved around me."

"My mother," Regina says thickly—when Hatter looks up there are tears welling in her eyes, "killed the only person besides my father who ever really loved me. She ripped out his heart and crushed it in front of me."

"I'm sorry." In the corner, Morris convulses, his hands slick with her blood, the flesh there peeling away to expose crumbling bones. Hatter shudders. For a moment, they sit in silence. "Did you know you've got a brother?"

Regina looks at her sharply, wariness in her eyes. "What?"

Hatter squirms. "Well, half-brother, anyway. Jack is his name. He lives Aboveground, somewhere. Here, I mean, in this world."

"Oh," Regina says.

"I tried to have him executed," Hatter adds apologetically. "He got me sent here instead."

"Executed," Regina echoes, frowning.

"He…" Hatter looks away, a lump rising in her throat and cutting off her air supply until she swallows. Thinking about Alice hurts more than she expected; when she speaks again, her voice sounds ragged and hollow. "I'm the embodiment of another person's—filth. Everything wrong with her and her life became me. He tried to help her… I suppose it doesn't matter now. I can't feel her anymore, and Dodgson knows where he is."

This time, it's Regina who offers sympathies.

"So what now?" Hatter asks after a moment during which both of them spend in examination of their own thoughts. "Does this curse have an end date?"

Regina lets out a thin sigh and drains the rest of her tea. "Hypothetically. No curse is permanently sustainable. They all have a, a catch, if you will, a flaw hidden somewhere in the construct that can be used to break them. This one is probably no different."

"…Probably?"

"I've been looking for fourteen years and haven't found this one's yet. It's either very well hidden or somewhere past the town limits, which I can't cross." She smiles ruefully, and Hatter feels her own shoulders sag and curses herself for being foolish enough to _still _harbor some hope.


	3. 8:15: Escape

**Escape**

Hatter stays in the relative safety of her tea house for several days, or possibly weeks. She tries to keep track of the progression of time by marking the walls of the tiny living space above the tea house itself: little lines of black ink that should have served as a calendar. The marks vanish when she sleeps and there is nothing else to distinguish the days, though, so she forgets.

She spends some time after that breaking into houses and stealing clocks, then enlisting Regina to make them stay with her. By the time she gives up in frustration for the futility of the exercise, she has almost two dozen of them. Every morning she resets them, but she has only to look away for the length of a breath before the time is 8:15 once again.

They turn against her in the end, just like everything else, and drive her from the flat. In the kitchen below, she stands in the quiet dark and listens to the stillness towering over her. Her grip on the counter isn't enough to keep the weight from crushing her to dust, and she runs, and runs, and runs. It rained earlier—it has _always_ rained earlier—and the pavement is still bright with water, glistening in the streetlight and soaking through the soles of her shoes.

Hatter doesn't know where she's going. Away from the giant clock looming over the center of town is enough for her, then away from the town's lights until she's following the road through trees. She stumbles once and stays down long enough to note blearily that her blood isn't making the asphalt bubble before staggering back up.

It isn't long before she finds the sign, all but illegible in the gloom, that marks the end of her flight. LEAVING STORYBROOKE, it announces to the world. She slumps against it and offers the metal what warmth she can for just long enough to catch her breath.

She pushes her hand against the air beyond the sign; it has the consistency of pudding. When she tries to go further, the Decree clamps around her throat and drags her back. Hatter rebounds off the road's meager shoulder and rolls into the mud while the breath is ripped from her lungs. Each wheeze feels like self-castigation.

A mewling sound escapes her throat and she hurls herself at the border again in desparation; this time the Decree throws her farther. Her cheek scrapes open against the edge of the road, and she lays there for a while.

"You brought this upon yourself." It's Morris; Hatter raises her head weakly to look at him. He's forgone his coat, and his shirtsleeves are rolled up past the elbows like he's about to do the dishes. She reaches for him, but recoils with a whimper when he shoves her head back with his foot and the contact sears through the abrasion on her cheek. "Don't touch me," he spits.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

Morris crouches over her, folding his arms over his knees and resting his chin on them. "You should know better than this by now, you know," he tells her. "Living, I mean. You were always an anomaly. You shouldn't have lasted longer than a day."

"I tried," Hatter says. Morris snorts. "I did—they wouldn't let me—they pulled me out of the water."

"Try _harder_," he says.

"Help me," she says, reaching for him again. He regards her outstretched hand with slitted eyes. "I hurt you so much. It would only be right…"

There are other voices now; she can hear them muttering behind her and an icy pair of hands tracing the back of her neck and her shoulders, but the only one that matters is Morris. "I want you to do it," he says very softly. "I want you to make yourself suffer. I want—" His hands close around her neck and he pulls her upright, so their faces are mere inches from each other and all she can do is stare at his mouth and think about what happened the last time they were this close.

He kisses her forehead, a touch so light it feels like little more than mist. "It's what you deserve," he murmurs.

Then he drops her, and her head thuds back into the mud. Hatter watches him walk away; her tears sting her cheek.

* * *

It takes Regina three hours to find Miss Knight after she goes missing. She drives through Storybrooke at random in hopes of spotting her before it occurs to her where the most likely places are. There are five ways out of Storybrooke, and she finds Miss Knight at the second one. She's asleep and caked in mud at the foot of the sign that marks the town limits.

Regina picks her way over the uneven ground until she's close enough to crouch down and touch Miss Knight's shoulder, then give a gentle shake when all that does is make Miss Knight whimper and cringe away. She rolls her head around to squint up at Regina; the side of her face is clotted with blood as well as mud, and Regina's stomach squirms.

"Come on," Regina says. She takes great care to pitch her voice low and soft, the way she would for a spooked horse, and it seems to work because Miss Knight follows obediently when Regina leads her back to the car.

The hum of the engine is not loud enough to mask the noise that Miss Knight makes: a high, unbroken whine which Miss Knight doesn't even appear conscious of making. "Miss Knight?"

There's a sharp _thuck_ as Miss Knight slams her head agains the car window, and the car tires skim the shoulder when Regina jumps. "It's _Hatter_," Miss Knight sobs.

"What?"

"Let me out," she says, eyes wild, and Regina stops in the middle of the road to stop Miss Knight from pitching herself out the door. "Let me out, please, I don't—I can't—it's _Hatter_, I'm Hatter, I'm not—"

"It's all right, it's all right," Regina says. "M—_Hatter_, just let me take you home and then—" She casts about for a way to help and settles, lamely, on, "I'll make some tea."

All the fight drains out of Miss Knight—out of Hatter at once, and she huddles into her seat and cries in silence for the remainder of the drive. Regina keeps her eyes fixed on the road, fighting to ignore the urge to pull over and at least try to help her more. She redoubles her grip on the steering wheel. It's been so long since anyone was even a little friendly to her—even the curse personas are either afraid of or indifferent to their mayor—and the unfamiliarity is making her sentimental.

When they get to the Glass Tree, Hatter seems reluctant to move; she flinches away when Regina reaches for her shoulder, so Regina is reduced to hovering awkwardly by the car and trying for the right words to get Hatter out of it. She never thought she would be relieved to see Dr. Hopper, but when he strolls up to them with a concerned expression, her smile is genuine.

"Something the matter, Mayor Mills?" Dr. Hopper asks. Regina pulls him aside to offer an abbreviated version of events: Miss Knight hiked out to the town line, slept there, and managed to make a complete mess of her face in the process. He nods slowly when she finishes. "You know, I wondered—"

Then he shakes himself and ventures back to the car, where Miss Knight—Hatter is sitting doubled over with her head in her hands. The scab beneath her right eye has cracked open and is oozing along the borders. It'll go back to normal at midnight, but knowing that doesn't make the wound look any better and Regina has to avert her eyes.

Dr. Hopper has no such trouble, or if he does he hides it well. He hands his dog's leash to Regina and then crouches down on the curb, his arms resting on his knees and his wrists dangling. "Madeline?" he says, in a tone Regina would normally associate with a death bed. "Can you look at me?" Miss—Hatter shudders, but otherwise gives no sign that she's heard him. "Please? It's all right. No matter what it is or what you might think, it's all right. We're here for you." He keeps going in the same vein for what feels like hours but is, in reality, only a few minutes before Hatter uncurls slowly, keeping one hand close to her shredded cheek, and lets them coax her into the tea house.

Regina puts a kettle on to boil while Dr. Hopper makes an attempt to clean Hatter up a little, an attempt which fails miserably when he suggests that she lower her hand to let him daub up the fresh blood from her cheek and she shrieks and knocks her chair over in her desperation to get away from him. It takes another five minutes to get her up from the floor again, and then they wait in awkward silence while she locks herself in the bathroom to do it herself.

After the third time this happens, Regina shifts the curse so Dr. Hopper remembers it. It gets so they're dragging Hatter back from the town line almost every day; invariably she is covered in mud and her own blood, which she never lets them touch. Regina asks her why one day; Hatter's only explanation is a muttered, "I'm poisonous." She doesn't question further.

"Why do you keep trying to leave?" she asks instead. "Even if the decree weren't keeping you here, the curse would."

Hatter studies her palms for a moment; she fell on them last night and, while the cuts are clean now, her skin is still raw and inflamed. "I can't just sit here," she whispers. Regina reaches out cautiously to squeeze her shoulder; Hatter shivers. "I keep dreaming that I've gone back. To the table, I mean, and it's everything I remember it being and he's there, of course, and I'm _home_, and then—"

She curls in on herself and closer to Regina, so her head rests on Regina's collarbone, and makes a high keening sound. Regina wraps her arms around Hatter's shoulders uncertainly, which seems to help; she starts talking again, at least. "No one can see me or hear me and then I realize I'm not there at all and it all slides away from me again."

"I'm sorry," Regina says. She can't remember the last time she said it and meant it like this. Hatter settles more heavily against her and sighs softly.

"Thank you for helping me," Hatter murmurs. Her voice makes Regina's whole chest vibrate. "For what it's worth, you don't seem evil to me."

Regina blinks. "Thank you." It doesn't seem like enough, not after a lifetime of wondering what it might be like to have—not a friend, but at least someone to be friendly with. "Have dinner with me tonight," she says. Hatter looks up at her, frowning. "I'll make lasagna?" Habits she forged during her time as the Queen are the only things that keep her from shrinking into her shoulders like she did when she was a child; mother always told her that uncertainty was unbecoming.

After a moment, Hatter nods before cuddling into her shoulder again.

* * *

It's 7:20 and Ruby's just brought her her usual veggie omelet and cranberry juice when the door bells jingle and a woman Mary Margaret has never seen before stumbles in. She looks dreadful: parchment-white and haggard, with dark circles under her eyes. Mary Margaret watches, concerned, while the woman crumples against the counter and stares up at the menu board as if her life depends on it. She orders the corned beef hash and then freezes, her head drooping against her chest and breathing as if she's run a marathon, at which point Mary Margaret can stand by no longer.

The woman is mumbling under her breath when Mary Margaret ventures up next to her. It sounds like half of an argument; _no _and _won't _and _can't _are about the only words Mary Margaret can actually pick out. "Excuse me," Mary Margaret says softly, then repeats herself more loudly when the woman gives no indication that she heard. The woman snaps upright so fast that Mary Margaret can hear her spine popping.

She fixes Mary Margaret with an imperious glare. "What."

Mary Margaret manages a tremulous smile in return. "My name is Mary Margaret Blanchard," she says. "I thought you looked—um—troubled."

"Did you," the woman says, her nostrils flaring. She holds Mary Margaret's gaze when she's speaking, but as soon as she stops her eyes dart to the side and trace something up the walls and then over the ceiling; when Mary Margaret looks, there's nothing. Perhaps it's an insect, a fly maybe.

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

The woman laughs, and it's horrible, like brittle wood snapping. Her hand flashes out and she has Mary Margaret's shoulder in a death grip before Mary Margaret can so much as blink. "I'm Madeline Knight," she says, around hysterical giggles, "and I would very much like to leave."

"The door's right there," Ruby says. Mary Margaret can hear the wariness in her voice.

Madeline lets go of Mary Margaret's shoulder and collapses onto a stool, still giggling. "I want—my breakfast—" she chokes out. "Please." She presses her palms into her eyes, her shoulders shuddering with badly suppressed mirth.

Mary Margaret sits with her until her hash comes, then sits without comment while Madeline drowns it under hot sauce and ketchup. "Nothing tastes right," she says without looking up, as if she can feel Mary Margaret watching. "Nothing tastes at all. It's like eating mud."

"It's the best diner in town," Mary Margaret says. "Everyone knows it."

Madeline closes her eyes, her lips moving soundlessly. Her knuckles go white around her fork. She shakes herself a moment later and starts to eat in tight, jerky movements, chewing with such force that Mary Margaret can hear her teeth clicking together. "What do you do?" she asks.

"I'm a teacher," Mary Margaret tells her. "Fourth grade. We're building birdhouses today."

"Birds can take care of their own houses," Madeline says, sneering. "It's presumptuous of you to say otherwise. I expect you build burrows for—for rabbits as well?" She scrubs her eyes with her free hand; a nerve in her jaw twitches.

"They seem to appreciate it," Mary Margaret whispers. Madeline snorts and eats the rest of her hash in resolute silence.

* * *

The lasagna tastes a little like snark meatloaf and Hatter feels a pang for the Glassland so strong that she can barely finish; she finds herself spilling stories like blood from a wound. Regina listens solemnly while Hatter explains how the games worked and the raw beauty of the bandersnatch runs and the wind and soothing blisters with the sea, how the water was clearer and greener there than the threatening grey of the Atlantic Ocean.

She stutters when she gets to Percy, who blinks back at her for a few seconds before collapsing to dust. "She was… better," Hatter manages at last.

"Better," Regina repeats quizzically, and Hatter stirs the remains of her lasagna with a fork.

"The first day I was at the Red Castle, I hit her—I didn't mean to, but—Alice was—I didn't know at the time, of course, but in retrospect it was Alice attacking me and I—she was too close, trying to help me, and I hit her across the face. And even after that she was kind to me—afraid, for a long time, but very kind. She was like that with everyone, until they started avoiding her. No one else liked me much." She focuses on the clink of silverware, however distorted it sounds up here. "Rightly so. I used to…"

"What?"

"Touching… helped, a bit, so I would… lure people in to make me feel better and then throw them away when I was done." Regina doesn't so much as twitch, and Hatter forces her shoulders to relax. "And besides that there was something wrong with me, everyone knew it. I was a knight but I didn't play the games right, or at all, really, and I'd come home caked in—whatever, bandersnatch blood and my blood and whatever else. I'm surprised Percy tolerated me." Her stomach twists at the memory of what it all led to, and she pushes her plate away. Chittering laughter echoes behind her and then fades. "They died because of me. I planned it all out and—I tried to get Percy to escape with me, but she wouldn't. She was trying to evacuate everyone else when the Jabberwock smashed the Red Castle to rubble. I never… found her body. I never looked properly."

Regina leans past the lasagna tray and squeezes her forearm. "I'm sorry."

"Two-hundred and thirty-eight people," Hatter whispers. "That's the estimated number of sapient lives ended because of what I did."

"I don't know how many—" Regina begins, then stops. Hatter covers her hand with her own. Regina takes a deep breath, her eyes closed, and then says, "Would you care for a drink?"

Hatter mutters an acceptance; she washes but does not dry the dishes while Regina gets the drinks. They retire to the sitting room, and Hatter finds she can't sit idly. She paces along the bookshelves instead, reading titles and taking large gulps. The cider bites harder than tea, and she imagines it creeping tendrils of vapor through her blood, tendrils to mirror the slick black ones crawling over the carpet and licking at her ankles.

"You're going to make yourself sick," Regina says, when she's drained the glass and goes for another.

"I've never had alcohol before," Hatter tells her. "Jasmine tea is the liquor of choice in Wonderland—though it's really more similar to your opiates. Or mekath, for the daring ones. A cup or two was fine, but more than that and you'd start hallucinating. I never—the ones from the mercury were bad enough."

"And they're worse here," Regina says softly.

Hatter shrugs.

The next time she goes to refill her glass, Regina doesn't comment; after her third or so her ability to keep count sloughs away from her and squirms into the thick shadows gathering in the corners. She chases after it, sedately because anything faster makes her head spin and her stomach churn, and when she combs her fingers through the blackness they come away sticky and glistening under a clinging layer of oil. It reflects a distortion of her own face back at her; her eyes are full of writhing things that she can't quite identify.

"Regina." Her tongue doesn't want to behave; she snaps at it angrily and tastes blood.

"Yes?"

"We are the reflections of human depravity," Hatter tells her, once her mouth is in order and her tongue has stopped bleeding. "Did you know that? The people out there—" she gestures vaguely in the direction of the window, and even the alcohol isn't enough to make any liquid slop out of her glass. Alice, she thinks, would have spilled, so she has that to cling to at least. "They go about their business on a thin crust of moral superiority over the great festering sea of vile filth below, blissfully unaware of it because _we_ are the repositories." The shadows thrum in approval and begin to spread; Hatter backs away hastily. "Mere vessels, you see, designed to contain the evil, and in so doing to mitigate and absolve… not ourselves, you understand, but them." She giggles. "Evil Queen, alter-ego, you understand."

The pulsing web of ink on the floor entangles her feet, and she teeters on the brink of falling until Morris grows out of the shadows and holds her upright. His breath, icy and sharp, tickles her ear. She closes her eyes to focus through it. "In—in their ignorance they deliver their suffering to us on… silver platters and expect us to grovel at their feet in gratitude for their kindness, and when instead we scream for the sheer desperate atrocity of it, they abhor us for our agony because it reminds them of their—oh—" The serrated edge of a bread-knife presses against her throat with all the tenderness of a caress, and she trembles until Morris murmurs for her to go on. "It reminds them of their own. That, my dear Regina, is the truth of it: we can plead for an end until our throats rupture and we drown in our own blood, and not one second of it will matter."

"Nothing does," Morris breathes, and melts away. Hatter wobbles from the loss.

Regina stares at her. Hatter doesn't see her move, but she's suddenly right _there_ with one hand on Hatter's lower back to steady her and easing the glass out of her other. "If I'd known this was how you'd react, I wouldn't have suggested the drink," she says.

"Drinks," Hatter corrects her tartly. "I think you ought to let yourself become inured to it." Regina sighs and guides her onto the couch. "To embrace monstrosity and seek to impose it on ourselves is better than to simply tolerate it. Better to lay claim to our own sickness than to have it thrust down our throats: at least then we are in control. There can be beauty in the grotesque, if only we are willing to dream it there." The cacophony of breaking stone shakes the whole house, and she seizes Regina's wrist, whimpering.

"You're drunk, Hatter," Regina says gently, easing Hatter's fingers off of her arm. She doesn't let go completely, just wraps both of her hands around Hatter's. After a while—minutes or maybe hours?—Hatter realizes she's shaking, not just her hands but almost up to her shoulders as well.

"Don't change the subject," she whispers. "It's dreadfully bad manners."

* * *

Regina insists that she spend the night in the guest room, but it reeks of rotting flesh so she wriggles out the window as soon as Regina is gone. She's well-practiced in walking when her legs are careening out of her control, so she makes it back to the tea house in short order, albeit with newly-shredded knees.

She props herself against the wall of the kitchen and listens to the alcohol chugging through her veins; it makes a sound like a steam engine. Hatter doesn't understand the appeal; it's a far clumsier poison than mercury. What she needs right now is tea, but the water up here is as dead as the leaves and she can't bear to listen to boiling that won't sing. Morris hands her the freezing kettle, and she cradles it, not looking at him and the way his face is undulating in time with her heartbeat.

"You're useless," he tells her. Each syllable is laden with disgust so thick it splatters onto her face and neck, where it itches and then burns. She wonders if she will have blisters tomorrow.

"I'm sorry," Hatter mutters, hugging the kettle tighter.

His lips curl; the expression makes her throat constrict and her intestines twist like a broken wind-up toy. "You might have the decency to do something about it."

She finds a bread-knife—it seems appropriate—and finds a sour relief in the way her neck splits open at its touch. It hurts very little, and Morris sits with her while she smears away in a blur of chilly crimson.

The return to awakeness is like paper ripped in half. She jerks away from the puddle of her own, still-tacky blood and looks wildly around the kitchen, and then her eyes focus and she sees it: a silvery, featureless child crouched in front of her.

(_why did you do that?_)

Hatter reaches for it and her hands pass through like it's nothing but steam; the shape collapses to gauzy wisps. In her head, the Protocol moves at last, squeaking, and she wonders whether the hallucination came from it or the mercury. There's a choked, garbled sob, and it takes too long to realize it came from her. "Why did you stop me?" she wails; it comes out more like a whisper.

The Protocol whimpers. (_i don't want to die—i don't want _you_ to die—i left you i'm sorry—but i'm back now—i'm awake—_)

White stars wheel in her vision when she slams her head back against the counter, but it does no good; she is still here and the Protocol is still in her mind.


	4. 8:15: Loss

It becomes a part of his daily routine: Join Mayor Mills in getting Madeline back in the tea house and cleaned up before she opens, then offer his services, again. "There's no shame in therapy," Archie tells her while Madeline gets him his cardamom and bagel and lox. "Everyone deserves to have help, if they ask for it."

"I don't need help because I'm not crazy," Madeline says every time before shoving his usual order at him. She never charges him anymore, but he knows how much it costs and leaves cash tucked under his saucer when he leaves. Pongo curls up by the counter while Archie eats; he's noticed that Madeline seems more focused when there are animals around to spoil, and Pongo adores attention, so the arrangement suits them both.

One day, though, she takes him up on the standing invitation to his office. She flops bonelessly onto the patient couch and buries her face in the worn leather. "Tell me about love," she says, her voice muffled by the cushions.

Archie blinks. "Well, it's human nature to want companionship. It's less important where it comes from: parents—" Madeline snorts "—or siblings, or friends or a partner."

She sits up, then, and wiggles her fingers at Pongo, who immediately obliges and curls up in her lap. He heaves a contented sigh as she scratches behind his ears. "But what _is _it?"

"It's the most powerful force in the universe," Archie tells her. "I've seen it spark radical changes in people; it brings out our best selves, you see."

Madeline stares at him for a long time. Her lips twist and then press together, and her eyes rove over the entirety of the office, lingering on the corners. Archie's just beginning to wonder if she's going to make a sound at all when she lets out a short, truncated burst of laughter. "Makes mothers face down themselves to save their daughters, doesn't it?" she says.

Archie studies her minutely; there are tears gathering in her eyes. "Madeline…" He licks his lips; he hates bringing up painful subjects, but letting things fester does no one any good. "Did you lose…?"

Her breath rattles out of her throat. "I lost everything I had to lose," she says, not looking at him. "But not a child, no. I wouldn't have—" She toys with Pongo's tags; they clink against each other between her fingers. "But what I really don't understand is why?"

"Why what?"

Madeline shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter anymore." Her fingers knit together and then twist so hard that he's worried she'll hurt herself, but her gaze is still fixed in the middle distance and Archie isn't sure she's aware of what she's doing. "I think I should go," she says, and flees before Archie can tell her that she needn't. He does watch out his window to make sure she gets back to the Glass Tree all right; it's just down the street and if he cranes his neck he can see the entrance.

She slams the door behind her; a moment later, he sees her flip the omnipresent _Open_ sign around to _Closed_.

* * *

Dr. Hopper tells her that Hatter made an appearance at his office today—Regina made sure that the curse would override patient confidentiality—but when she brings it up during her four o'clock tea in the Glass Tree, Hatter blithely feigns innocence. Regina finds herself complaining about this some three hours later, while Graham strokes her back and absorbs her every word with something akin to reverence.

"You could get her to the hospital," Graham says when she's finished. "She's not your responsibility and they can help her better than you can." His hand ghosts over her knee, and Regina wonders idly whether he's saying what he thinks she wants to hear for selfish reasons or offering honest advice that would, under normal circumstances, be the best option.

But she's reluctant to put Hatter in the hospital's psych ward; there are very few people Regina would inflict that concentrated repetitiveness on, and Hatter is the closest thing she has to a friend. "Maybe," she says. Graham smiles and kisses the inside of her wrist.

"Whatever you decide, I'll be here for you," he murmurs.

Regina kisses him; he sighs and threads his fingers through her hair. It's nice, she thinks, to have someone she can rely on this way.

She lies awake for the better part of the night, though, listening to his quiet snoring and turning options over in her head. As Queen, she survived through more unpleasant situations than she can count—even before that, Mother took great care to rid Regina of the delusions that there are ever clean-cut good and bad options. She ought to be better equipped to find the lesser evil now.

This would be easier if she could edit Hatter into the curse and ease her out of her memories, but that was the first thing she tried after hearing of Hatter's appearance and the experience was not unlike running headlong into a stone wall. Regina has no desire to repeat it, and she doubts it would be any more successful a second time.

There were certain potions that could fix insanity; Regina might've tried them if she hadn't seen firsthand how badly Wonderlanders reacted to this world. Hatter had, thus far, not suffered a second breakdown in Regina's presence, but Regina had no doubt they were the impetus for her near-daily hikes to the town line. For all she knew, a potion designed to help a normal human might just poison a Wonderlander.

She rolls onto her side, scowling. Worrying about it will do no good.

* * *

Nothing _changes_; that's the real problem. Hatter thinks she might be able to bear it if that weren't the case; it was not so bad Aboveground when she and—and Morris ventured up to kidnap Chloe. She averts her eyes from where he's picking dirt out from beneath his fingernails at the table by the window, the one Archie sits at every morning. Even without looking, Hatter can feel Morris leering at her, and of course not seeing does nothing to keep her from hearing.

"Your problem is that you refuse to do anything about it," he says. "For all your complaining about the Storybrookers and their complacency, well…" Hatter whips around to glare at him, and he smirks, shrugs, and returns his attention to his nails. The thin blade he's using shimmers.

"You saw what happened when I tried to do something," Hatter says. The Protocol clicks anxiously in her mind, and she shoves it away. It's much easier now than it was in Wonderland. "You might help me," she adds with too much hope.

His hand flickers; his blade slides between her ribs and out the other side. The skin closes over again before she can bleed, but the wound stings viciously all the same. "There," Morris says, his lips curling. "I helped you. I have always helped you and what did it get me? An impossible work load and a short hop to an early grave."

"No!"

He sneers. "How else do you think I made it here? The Queen's never made a habit of being kind to traitors."

Hatter turns away, shuddering, as Morris tilts his head back so she can see the clotted blood encircling his neck. "No—_no_—"

(_he's lying_) the Protocol whispers. This time, she lets it speak. (_he's not real—he's a set of misfiring synapses and he's lying to you—_)

"Does it matter if I am?" Morris demands. His arms snake around her waist from behind and then wander slowly up to caress her throat before tightening there. His fingers are clammy; Hatter can smell the blood, iron and cloying and too thick to breathe through. "I'm not going away and there's nothing you can do about it." He nuzzles the nape of her neck, and Hatter whimpers.

(_not real_) the Protocol shrieks. (_not real not real not real—_)

She tries to hold on to him anyway, but Morris melts through her fingers with a triumphant sneer.

It's too empty in her tea house, so she flees. Outside, it's overcast, and the flat light makes everything look two-dimensional. Hatter stumbles along all the same until she finds a place that looks full enough to be a little real. A bell tinkles when she falls through the door.

She lands on a scuffed wooden floor and, when she rolls over, finds herself gazing up at a mobile of tiny glass unicorns. They're melting, and little droplets of glass are dribbling down like candle wax. The drops glitter as they fall; one lands on her cheek and smolders there.

"Can I help you?" The voice is low and has the pleasant burr she associates with the Bellman's ilk; its owner turns out to be an unassuming man in a drab suit, who's leaning on his cane and examining her with faint concern.

"I—" The whole room tilts; Hatter clutches at the floor until it stops, and carefully sits back up again. The mobile has stopped melting, and the glass on her cheek has vanished. "I don't know who you are."

The man smiles. "The name's Gold," he says. "Like the shop." Off her blank look, he adds, "It's on a sign."

"I didn't see it," Hatter says. She realizes belatedly that he's waiting for her to get up, so she rolls carefully onto her side and eases herself to her feet. "May I just look around for a while?"

"Of course," Gold says. "Ask if you see anything you like particularly."

The shop is more cluttered than anything Hatter has seen in Storybrooke so far: brimming over with daggers and swords and a quiver-full of old arrows, miniature figurines made of glass and wood and stone, a set of ancient wooden puppets who look as horrified by Storybrooke as Hatter is. There are antique clocks and glass cases filled with crusty glass bottles and gilded boxes, worn-out rugs rolled up and propped up in the corner, dozens of crumbly old books, a chest filled with straw. The walls are mostly hidden under paintings and decorated scrolls and even a tapestry or two. It all smells overwhelmingly of age and dust; it puts Hatter in mind of the warehouse of histories that Morris showed her so very long ago.

She winces away from the memory and is disgusted to find her eyes blurring with tears. She scrubs them away with her sleeve. Gold, perhaps sensing her distress, says, "You own the tea house on main street. The Glass Tree."

"Yes," Hatter mutters, sniffing. The threads of a faded tapestry unravel and reach out to strangle her until the Protocol grumbles and slaps them back down into their apple tree.

"It's been too long since I enjoyed a proper cup of tea," Gold says.

Hatter says nothing; Gold returns to polishing his counters.

None of the clocks tick, and she avoids them after realizing this. She examines a Moroccan tea set which she finds half-hidden on the bottom of a bookshelf and is on the point of asking where it came from when she notices the book. Someone shoved it between the bookshelf and the wall, so only half an inch or so of the leather spine is visible.

Hatter wrestles it out because anything worth hiding is worth finding again. It's perfectly square and the title is rendered in ostentatious gold lettering: _Once Upon a Time_, author unknown. The pages hums beneath her fingertips when she lets it fall open in her lap.

The page it opens to is a perfect watercolor portrait of Regina, albeit dressed in a way that suggested one of the Queen's more exuberant balls rather than a sensible Abovegrounder. There's a victorious smile on her face, and the caption identifies her as the Evil Queen watching with vicious glee as Snow White eats her poisoned apple. Hatter slams the book closed and takes it to the counter; Gold parts with it for eighty-six dollars—"It's one of a kind," he explains with a slight smile.

Hatter takes it back to the tea house and leaves the closed sign up.

* * *

The book tells a tale that bears little resemblance to the one Regina told her. It begins with Princess Snow White's seventeenth birthday celebration and Regina's—the Evil Queen's seduction of a genie, whom she subsequently convinces to murder the king and then curses into a mirror to do her bidding for the rest of time. From there, she plays the part of a grieving widow until she manufactures evidence that Snow had orchestrated the assassination.

Snow escapes, of course. Hatter isn't surprised—the illustrations of the princess are striking in their resemblance to the woman who accosted her in Granny's Diner however long ago that happened—but she can't help rolling her eyes at how predictable the story is. She becomes a fugitive in the woods, having adventures and befriending werewolves, living on what she can steal and occasionally fighting off the Evil Queen's soldiers.

After a while the narrative wanders back to the Evil Queen, who hires a huntsman to kill Snow. This, too, fails miserably, and the huntsman loses his heart and his freedom to the Evil Queen for his mercy. Hatter's insides squirm unpleasantly when she turns a page to find a lovingly detailed rendering of their kiss and the terror in the huntsman's eyes; she leaves the book alone for a while. She makes herself a cup of darjeeling and listens to the Protocol humming unhappily while she drinks.

Morris reappears, his skin grey and sagging, and sprawls on her bed with his head pillowed on the book. "That wasn't so bad, you know," he says. His voice rattles out of his throat the way it did when he was sick, and Hatter flinches. "I could have been just angry and then gotten over it. But of course you had to go and make everything worse by coming back so many times."

"I'm sorry," Hatter whispers. Morris just snorts derisively and rolls over to look at the wall. She battles down the impulse to go to him and find some way to make it better. She can't; he made that quite clear.

She turns to the next page without looking so she doesn't have to see the picture again. It returns its attention to Snow White, who trades her werewolf for a prince and draws the ire of his father, who wants him to marry a different princess for political gain; the triangle resolves itself when the prince murders a siren to save the foreign princess's True Love—for some reason, the author insisted on capitalizing it. Hatter finds a red pen and circles the phrase for later consideration.

In the final quarter of the book, there is a snarl of plot to the effect that the Evil Queen calls in a poorly-explained debt to convince Snow to eat a poisoned apple, which fails because of True Love, and is followed in short order by two coups and the annexation of a country, the Evil Queen's imprisonment and later banishment, and a lavish wedding ceremony. The last pages deal with the escape of their infant daughter from the dark curse—the curse, Hatter supposes, which created Storybrooke.

This last is what catches Hatter's attention most: the daughter's name is Emma Swan, and the imp Snow and her prince had captured previously tells them that she will be the one to break the curse. Rumpelstiltskin is his name; if Hatter can find him, she can, perhaps, find Emma and get her to Storybrooke.

The illustrations of Rumpelstiltskin depict him as an imp with a scaly, distorted face, with bulging reptilian eyes and jagged, yellow teeth; certainly nothing like anyone has seen in Storybrooke. Perhaps Regina will know where to find him; Hatter tucks the book under her arm and clatters down the stairs with Morris gliding along at at her heels.

* * *

Hatter waits silently in her office while Regina flips through the book; this does nothing to ease the tightening of Regina's heart. The book's story is on Snow's side, completely, and leaves little room for interpretation. Each page-turn feels like a step closer to the gallows.

When she finishes, though, Hatter only says, "The part about the huntsman, is that true?" Regina nods, feeling like a child again, like she's standing before her mother and waiting for her sentence. She can hear Hatter breathing harshly. "Why?"

"I just—" Regina swallows, hard, against the lump in her throat. "I needed someone not to hate me." She looks up; Hatter looks less disgusted than Regina imagined she would.

"Do you still…? I mean, is he here in Storybrooke?"

"He's the sheriff," Regina says. "Graham is his name."

Hatter drums her fingers on the armrest of her chair. "Oh," she says at last. "The thing is—" She squirms. "It's not that I don't understand that—that impulse, because I do, it's just. My rewrites—and—well, it isn't worth it, I don't think." Regina says nothing, and it doesn't take long for Hatter to start babbling again. "_Can_ you give his heart back? Is that possible?"

Regina shakes her head. "Not without killing him." She'd rather not get into the details, but Hatter looks so intent that it's hard not to keep going. "When you take someone's heart with magic, the body keeps going, but—there's no more pulse, or blood flow, or any of that. So the blood congeals in the veins."

"Well…" Hatter frowns. "Your mother isn't anyone's slave. If his heart was in _his _possession instead of yours…?"

"Yes, that would work," Regina says. She hesitates; she doesn't know how Graham would react to being in his own control without any warning, nor how badly the removal of his heart damaged him. "Is this a condition for your continued friendship?"

"It isn't a contract, Regina," Hatter says gently. "But I… If I could take back every change I made to every rewrite, I would do it. Most of them were pointless and petty and—well. Rewritten love isn't love at all, not really, and I can't imagine this is much different."

Regina can't look at her anymore, anymore than she can the book; she returns her attention to the paperwork on her desk—the city budget, as it has been every day for so long that she knows every figure by heart—and blinks against unexpected tears. If she loosens her grip on Graham, he'll slip away entirely and then what will she have?

"I don't hate you," Hatter whispers, as if reading her mind. "Neither does Archie. You didn't have to take our hearts for that."

"I'll think about it," Regina says thickly; it's the most she can manage right now. Hatter changes the subject to ask safer questions—Storybrooke identities, mostly—and Regina's happy to answer, if only to keep the conversation well away from the sheriff.

* * *

She keeps Graham's heart in an enchanted lockbox in her closet. When she gets home tonight, Regina takes it out and, instead of calling him, turns the heart over and over in her hands. She knows it very well by now: the unexpected firmness of it and the strength of its beats, how the vena cava twitches whenever she touches the ragged edge of it. For a long time she didn't have names for what she saw; after coming to Storybrooke, she found an anatomy textbook and learned them all. She can identify the terminal sulcus by touch and name every artery and vein; there have been times when she wanted to open it up and see the atria and ventricles instead of merely reading about them.

It may be Graham's heart, but she knows it far better than he.

Regina puts the heart back in its lockbox and waits for the old magic to seal once more, then puts it in her purse and walks to the police station. Graham is still there, as he always is on nights when she doesn't call him. He smiles like she's the best thing he's seen all day, and she promptly loses her nerve. "I thought we could go out for dinner, tonight," she says.

Graham beams at her, but all Regina can think of is his heart beating steadily in its enchanted box instead of in his chest. They go to Tapenade and Regina can only pick at her prawn bisque. Afterwards, she drives him home and follows him up to his front door.

He mostly looks confused when she pulls out the lockbox, even more so when she places it in his hands and he realizes that it's warm and that Regina isn't quite ready to let go of it yet. "What is it?"

"It's very important," Regina tells him. One last command can't hurt anything. "Don't look inside. Just put it in a safe and make sure—make sure nothing happens to it."

She tears herself away all at once, hoping to get it over with, and flees to her car without looking back.


	5. 8:15: Agreement

**Agreement**

Her house seems colder now that no one visits; Regina spends more and more of her free hours in the Glass Tree because of it. Hatter never says anything about Graham, but Regina knows he's been coming in now that he's operating under his own power—she sees him leaving sometimes, and he always avoids her gaze when they pass in the streets.

To her surprise, it's Dr. Hopper who brings it up, rather timidly, while they're waiting outside the bathroom for Hatter to finish picking gravel out of her cheek. "I noticed that you and the sheriff—"

"We broke up," Regina says shortly. The words feel strange coming out of her mouth; they don't begin to encompass what really happened. Sometimes she still imagines his heartbeat locked in her desk at the office, waiting for her.

"I'm sorry," Dr. Hopper says, sounding as if he genuinely means it.

"I expect you deal with this sort of thing all the time," Regina mutters. "Stupid people who get so caught up in their own attempts at happiness that they can't handle it when it ends." Mother would be ashamed.

Dr. Hopper, however, looks thoughtful. "I wouldn't call it stupidity," he says. "We're social creatures by nature. We crave companionship, all of us. Trying to push it away out of fear that it will end—that's the real stupidity." He shrugs and, for a moment, becomes very engrossed in the handle of his umbrella. "I mean, everything ends. But what else is there?"

The lock on the bathroom door clicks and Hatter peeks out. Her hair is wet and hangs over the ragged places where she scoured away her skin on the asphalt last night. "Safety," she says.

"Complete isolation is enough to drive a person insane," Dr. Hopper says.

Hatter eases the rest of the way out of the bathroom and darts past them to toss her muddy clothes into a hamper. As she goes, Regina hears her mutter "we're all mad here," but it's clear she's not looking for a response.

It would be easy to get the heart back, Regina thinks as she watches Hatter stutter across the room. She has skeleton keys for both Graham's front door and the safe, and once the heart was back in her hands no one would be the wiser. Hatter might guess, but Regina would be careful—no sudden changes in his habits, no sudden reversals.

Hatter presses a steaming mug of oolong into her hands, and Regina concentrates on the warmth seeping into her fingers to distract herself from the plan knitting together in her head. She has Hatter and, perhaps, Dr. Hopper now, and there's nothing forcing _them_ to treat her so kindly. She can do without Graham. She must.

Abruptly, Hatter says, "His name was Morris."

"What?" Dr. Hopper pauses with his cardamom halfway to his lips. Regina, who's heard Hatter refer to a vague _he _before, merely raises an eyebrow.

"My… my—he was a friend I had a long time ago," Hatter says. "Morris—but I hurt him, badly, and we never really—" She shudders. "He turned against me, in the end, of course. If he hadn't I'd still be in—in New York."

He'd sold her out to Mother, then. Hatter stares moodily into her tea while Dr. Hopper pats her shoulder and mutters comforting things about how he's sure it isn't as terrible as she thinks and there are always extenuating circumstances. Regina runs through the possibilities: what could Hatter have done that was so awful she feels no impulse for revenge? Killed his family? Rewritten him—only if it was that, surely she would have made sure he _couldn't_ betray her?

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," Hatter says, and Dr. Hopper lets the subject go. They finish their tea and go downstairs so Hatter can open the tea house; by the time the first customers arrive, Regina's on her way out the door.

Dr. Hopper's hand on her elbow stops her before she can decide what route to take to her office today; she looks at him inquisitively. "I just want you to know my door's always open. If you need someone to talk to—even if it's unofficial." Regina frowns, but there's no sign of duplicity in his expression.

"I'll bear that in mind," she says. Dr. Hopper offers her a faint smile, which she returns hesitantly, and then sets off across the street with Pongo trotting along next to him.

* * *

Some nights, Hatter spends in front of her mirror. She presses her palms to it and leans and leans and leans against the door that isn't but should be; she does not, can not, _will _not cry for what she has lost.

She slaps the sneer from her reflection's face again and again and _again_ forever until she is huddled on her knees with her fingers sliced wide open and tracing slick red paths on the floorboards. Cowards, someone told her once, die many times before their deaths.

"Once would be enough," she mutters, with a bitter laugh that is better than the alternative.

It isn't worth cleaning up afterwards; everything returns to normal at midnight. Sometimes she sits with her back propped against the wall and watches the shards vanish from her fingers and the lacerations seal themselves back up; the switch from incoherency to the clarity of having all her blood inside where it belongs feels like a hammer blow straight to the brain.

Tonight is not one of those nights, nor will she make her flight to the town line; Hatter can't even summon the energy to get off the couch. She watches the light fade with her head propped on the _Once Upon a Time _book and tries to count out the days.

She has died three times since Graham regained his free will, but they weren't consecutive nights, she doesn't think. It was an accident the first time: a blow from the decree to keep her from leaving and all she remembers is feeling her head crack like an egg against the ground and then the Protocol fretting over her and babbling about being sorry. The second and third were not. She mixed a bottle of rat poison with her evening tea with encouraging from Morris and then, when the Protocol snapped her back to life before the sun could even finish setting, sulked for a day—two days? three? perhaps a week? all the same days, at any rate—before breaking into the police station to experiment with bullets.

It's as good a way to mark the time as any; maybe, she thinks through the haze of tonight's mercury, she'll make a habit of it: mark each sundown with another death and use that to keep count of the days. A calendar of suicides. Hatter giggles and hides her face in the book when the setting sun sends a spear of painful golden light through her eyes.

(_you mustn't_) the Protocol says. It's woven into her nerves and through her brain, so its voice comes through crisp and clear despite the way everything else blurs in and out of focus, and Hatter scowls. (_you mustn't keep doing this, you mustn't hurt yourself_—)

"Shut up," she growls; the sound of her own far-too-loud voice makes her wince. For once, the Protocol obeys, and they sit in silence. Her gums are bleeding; Hatter can taste it.

The room is almost completely dark when Hatter hears the hinges squeak as the door opens. She lifts her head as much as she's able and squints; in the gloom, she can just see the outline of a person reaching for the light switch. "Don't," Hatter says.

"Hatter?" It's Regina's voice, heavy with concern. "Are you—"

"'m never okay," Hatter sighs. But she's better tonight than usual—this way, at least, enough parts of her are numb to make it all right. "Can't feel my legs."

Regina's heels clatter against the floorboards. "Is there anything I can do? Call for an ambulance, or—"

"No!" Hatter tries to sit up and succeeds only in sliding off the couch; she balances, wobbling, for a second, then slumps over sideways and melts into the floor. "Told you I'm fine. Just… tingly." It's true; regiments of pins are doing rounds up and down her legs and over her hands.

Regina touches her forehead with blazing fingers—Hatter is surprised to open her eyes and find that Regina isn't actually on fire—and then her voice tightens up with terror when she says, "You're all clammy. What did you take?"

"Nothing," Hatter tells her. If she had the energy to do so, she'd roll her eyes. "I'm _Hatter_. Mercury, y'know. Happens."

"I'm calling—"

"I said no!" Hatter seizes her wrist, more by chance than otherwise, and holds on for dear life. She has no desire to return to that horrible place and the stench of obsessive cleanliness. "Just. Just stay."

Regina lets out a defeated sigh and maneuvers them both so Hatter's head is in her lap. She combs her fingers through Hatter's hair; her nails scrape pleasantly across her scalp. "This happens often?" she asks.

Hatter manages a tiny shrug. "Morris used to…" She wonders where he went; she hasn't seen him since the sun set, when the attack started. "It was nice, anyway." Regina makes a little noise of understanding, and the repetitive motion of her fingers lull Hatter into silence.

* * *

She ends up falling asleep there on Hatter's floor and wakes with the entirety of her back and neck squealing in protest of the slightest movement; Regina groans in spite of herself when she tries to shift away from Hatter without waking her. The noise is enough to foil her intentions. It doesn't matter, because Hatter gives no sign of annoyance. Instead, she wraps an arm around Regina's waist and hums against her shoulder.

"Thank you," she says.

"What for?"

"Being patient with me. I know I'm not—easy to be close to," Hatter mutters.

Despite the stiffness and the crick in her neck, Regina snickers. "You aren't the only one, if it comes to that."

"On the contrary," Hatter says, rolling her head around to peer up at Regina with a faint frown. "I find you very—well. I haven't had many friends and I'm not any good at it, but you've been nothing but kind to me. That must count for something."

"Oh." Regina supposes it _is_ true that she's made a habit of going out of her way to offer what help she can for Hatter, but it's not as if she has any responsibilities that would take precedence, not when each day is on a strict time loop. Were the circumstances different, she'd have left Hatter to fend for herself. She hesitates to say as much, though; whatever the circumstances were when Hatter first arrived, Regina doesn't want to do without her now. "Thank you."

Hatter doesn't respond, and for a while they sit together watching the sky grow lighter. The part of her that Regina always imagines to have Mother's voice keeps insisting that the other shoe is going to drop, and soon, but it's easier to ignore than usual if she focuses on matching her breathing to Hatter's.

"I was fourteen when I was born," Hatter says abruptly.

"What?"

Hatter squirms away and rolls up to her feet, then offers a hand to help Regina follow her. "When Alice—I'm not sure what happened exactly, only that she was supposed to come to Wonderland and didn't, and then something made it so she _couldn't_ visit for a long time, and I dropped into existence out of the death of her childhood." She shrugs. "Born's not really the right word, is it?"

"I suppose not," Regina says.

"I didn't know any of this until years later, just that I _wasn't _and then suddenly I was, and… what I'm trying to say is I know what it feels like to not have any other options and I don't—it's not that you're blameless, because you aren't anymore than I am, but I don't think you're evil."

It's so absurd that Regina almost laughs. "In thiscase you _are_ the only one," she says. Hatter starts for the stairs leading to the tea house's kitchen without letting go of Regina's hand; Regina follows in her wake with no small amount of bemusement.

"When I was twenty-one years old, I unleashed the Jabberwock on the Glassland—on _my_ people—because I had to escape them and I refused to do the sensible thing and just leave. It wasn't as if anyone would have minded; I didn't have many friends and all chessmen are replaceable." Hatter lets Regina go to get the kettle out of its cabinet and it clatters on the stovetop more loudly than usual; her hands shake violently all the while. "I felt at the time that I needed a reaction and of course I was wrong, but—well, regret doesn't bring back the dead."

"Nor does it take back curses," Regina points out quietly.

"Curses that you cast when you had no other avenues. They _won_, Regina, and then they didn't do the decent thing and throw you under a guillotine. What could you have done? Rolled over and accepted your fate as their whipping queen for the rest of your life?"

Regina feels her lips pull back in a snarl before she can stop herself. "_No_," she snaps, and Hatter shrugs and nods as if to say _well of course not_. "But—" She wishes, more than anything, that she _had _acted differently. There is not one specific thing that she wishes she could change; the more exact her memories become, the easier it is to accept that she had done the absolute best she could, given the circumstances. But when she allows her hindsight to blur out and see the bigger picture, she knows that, somewhere, somehow, something went very, _very_ wrong and she suspects it is her fault and that her life now is the punishment.

"I had options," Hatter whispers. "You didn't. That's the difference."

She hands Regina a steaming cup that smells overpoweringly of ginger. Regina nurses it in silence for a moment, until it's cooled down enough for her to take more than minuscule sips and she can taste the hints of lemon beneath the ginger. "They were going to execute me, you know," she says. "They had me lashed to a post and a squad of archers at close range, and Snow stopped it at the last minute and instead they found a way to cripple my magic so I couldn't use it in my own defense, let alone to attack." Hatter joins her at the counter, her own cup cradled in both hands. "But that was a curse, so there had to be a loophole."

"Storybrooke," Hatter says.

"Indeed."

Hatter smiles like glass cracking: sudden and not quite symmetrical. "Here's to desperate times, then," she says, and holds out her teacup with the air of one handling a jewel-encrusted goblet. Regina finds herself smiling in return as she clinks her own cup against the rim of Hatter's.

* * *

Hatter goes for a walk. The Storybrookers will survive for one day without their morning tea—less than twenty-four hours from now, they won't even remember they missed it. She fills her lungs with the crisp fall air that no longer claws at her throat on the way down.

(_you're not evil_) the Protocol says after a moment. (_how could you be? you're mine_) The sensation of it curling itself around her spine like an attention-starved cat isn't as strong as it would be in Wonderland, but it gets the point across nonetheless.

"I killed hundreds of people and tore the Tea Party apart," Hatter mutters, ignoring the startled glance this draws from the freckly woman passing from the opposite direction. "I disrupted your orderly world and brought you with me when I left it. By all rights you should hate me most of all."

The Protocol squirms. (_mine_) it says after a long moment.

"Wonderland could die without you. And it would be because of me." Hatter takes a deep breath; she's avoided thinking about _that _part until now, but Morris's ongoing absence makes it harder to ignore.

(_but you're_ _mine_)

Hatter steps around the corner of the post office, and a chilly gust of wind slaps into her. She shoves her hands into her pockets and hurries across the street. Regina told her where to find Rumpelstiltskin—and now that Hatter knows, it seems obvious. Of course the deal-making imp would run a pawn shop.

Gold doesn't recognize her when she arrives at his shop, but he has the same mild demeanor as he did the last time she was here. Hatter eyes him narrowly after he asks if he can help her, and then says, "Maybe. Who is Emma Swan?"

She _feels _the curse shifting around them, like a massive snake slithering over her arms, its scales sliding over her skin. Gold doesn't even twitch. "I've never heard that name before in my life," he says.

"Don't, Rumpelstiltskin," Hatter snaps. Gold smiles faintly. "I'm in no mood for games."

Gold chuckles and limps a bit closer. "I imagine not," he says. "Emma Swan is the savior, the one who will break the curse. But you knew that, since you knew the name would trigger my memories." He inclines his head slightly in her direction. "Clever of you, Miss…?"

"It was only a guess."

"A hope," Gold says.

"Both," Hatter concedes.

"But I'm afraid you have me at an advantage," Gold says.

Hatter sniffs and runs her fingers along the top of the nearest display case. They come up grey with dust. "I'm the Hatter," she says. "I came here—a while ago. Decades or days, I don't know."

"I see," he says. "Well, then, I can only assume that you restored my memories early because you wanted something. You do understand that magic doesn't work here?"

"I don't _want_ magic," Hatter says, glaring at him. "Your sort is more trouble than it's worth. No. I want you to help me find Emma."

He smiles. "Not content to leave it to fate?"

"I don't believe in fate." Hatter puts on her talking-to-the-Queen smile, and Gold cocks an eyebrow just slightly. "It's unreliable."

Gold studies her for a moment, his expression inscrutable. At last he says, "As it happens, I have certain sources outside of Storybrooke which may prove invaluable in finding our savior. However—"

"All things come with a price," Hatter sing-songs. "I did read the book, you know. What's yours?"

"You won't breathe a word about this to Regina," Gold says.

Hatter scowls. "Regina is my friend," she says.

"That's my price. Take it or leave it, dearie."

Hatter drums her fingers on the display case. "Deal," she says. "Find Emma and get her to Storybrooke, and my lips are sealed. Gold holds out his hand to shake; Hatter accepts it and he smiles, wolflike.


	6. 8:15: Coping

**Coping**

Hatter is waiting on the front porch when Regina opens the door one morning; she's fully dressed and looks lucid enough, so Regina arches an eyebrow at her and waits for a logical explanation. Hatter just holds out a crisp manilla envelope. "I have something for you," she says with a caricature of a grin. "Best not read it until I'm gone."

Without another word, Hatter spins on her heel and marches away. Regina watches her go, frowning, before she slits open the envelope and retrieves the note within. It's written in Hatter's nigh-illegible scrawl, and Regina leans against the doorframe to decipher it.

_I went to Gold to get him to help me find our savior,_ it reads. Regina feels her eyebrows skyrocket._ He remembers who he is now—her name triggered his memories—and he's got some means of finding her which he wouldn't disclose to me. He seemed confident enough, though—maybe we can break this damnable curse soon._

_His price was that I couldn't breathe a word of it to you. He ought to learn how to phrase things better, don't you think?_

Regina snorts in spite of herself, then crumples the paper up and goes back inside to retrieve a box of matches and make use of the fireplace. She watches the letter burn until it's nothing but ash, then sweeps the ash into a dustpan and adds them to the little compost heap in the backyard for good measure.

She passes Mr. Gold on her way to the office and watches him surreptitiously; he gives no outward sign that he's regained his memories of his life in the Enchanted Realm, but the skin on the back of her neck crawls all the same.

Hatter's happy to lend her the book again, and Regina pours over it for a few days, hunting for some clue as to its origin. The story picks up at the death of her husband and follows Snow with the sort of dogged perseverance Regina had come to associate with her ragtag group of dwarves and fairies, and the real reasons for their war are shuffled aside in favor of some nonsense about jealousy—as if Regina has ever cared about being _fair _when Mother wasn't looming over her shoulder.

The illustrations are startlingly accurate; Regina recognizes the simpering expression on Snow's face, the equally nauseating longing written over the genie's, the terror in Graham's—in the huntsman's eyes. A twinge of guilt accompanies the longing, this time.

Rumpelstiltskin is really the only logical assumption. He spoke the prophecy about Emma; he created the curse itself and taught her what she needed to know to cast it. Regina frowns and, not for the first time, wonders at his real motives.

* * *

The days slide back into a blur, even with Gold's memories restored. Hatter makes him tea now and again, though he keeps his mouth shut tight on the subject of Emma Swan. She makes a few more stabs at seeing Archie on a more professional basis; her alter-ego becomes her sister, twins, of course, and with every near-identical session she gets better at dodging the uncomfortable questions Archie always asks.

She drags Regina away from her office one day, and they walk out to the river together. Hatter brings sandwiches, Regina a pair of apples; they picnic on the lee side of the bridge, Hatter sprawled on a stretch of dry grass and Regina sitting rather more stiffly next to her. "Did you ever visit Wonderland?" Hatter asks after a while, setting aside the remains of her sandwich.

Regina shrugs. "Once or twice. I tried to—well, my mother was there."

"And what an exciting family reunion that would have been."

"Yes."

"When I was younger—" Hatter pulls up a handful of grass and lets it run through her fingers. "Before the Jabberwock, I mean, Percy and I went out to the Wabe River a few times. The water was so clear you could see right to the bottom—there were little colonies of crabs, they'd make houses out of river rocks and thatch the roofs with the rushes that grew along the banks. Of course the current would pull that away, eventually, so they always needed more…" She trails off. At the bottom of this river, there's nothing but sand and pebbles.

Regina reaches over to clasp her shoulder briefly. "I had an apple tree," she murmurs. "I remember—mother helped me plant it, when I was a girl. She told me it was bred for strength and that, if I tended it well, it would grow up to withstand any storm and produce the most succulent fruit. And then when I got a little older, she put me up on one of the branches and told me that I was going to be like this tree one day—strong and beautiful and untouchable. She promised, and—it doesn't matter." Hatter glances over at her; Regina tugs on her sleeves and avoids her gaze.

"That sounds lonely, being untouchable," Hatter says.

"She wanted the best for me."

"She did." Hatter reaches for Regina's hand, taking care to give her time to pull away if she needs to, then laces her fingers through Regina's when Regina offers no protest. "I'm sure she did." She squeezes gently; Regina, after some hesitation, returns the gesture.

"Has Mr. Gold made any progress on the savior front?" Regina asks. Her hand twitches in Hatter's, and she eases away from the contact. Hatter lets her go.

"If he has, he hasn't told me," Hatter says. "I'll let you know the second that changes. Why?"

"I…" Regina wets her lips and stops. "It's nothing."

"What?"

"I said it's nothing," Regina snaps, glaring at her. Hatter holds her gaze for a count of ten before looking away.

"Fine; it's nothing," she says. Something slimy-looking and dark green oozes up from the river bank; Hatter stretches to prod it with her toe, and it retreats, bubbling, until the Protocol grumbles and it dissolves completely. She blinks twice to rid herself of the last of it. "Archie claims to be very helpful about 'nothings' that won't go away, you know."

Regina's scowl only deepens, and she picks herself up with as much dignity as she can muster. "I need to get back to work."

"We're in a time loop," Hatter says, exasperated, but Regina ignores her.

* * *

Archie always knows when someone is lurking outside his office. There's Pongo's keen instinct for a potential friend, for one, and the creaky floorboards besides. He figures it's best to let the them fidget until they're ready, rather than pulling them in prematurely, so when he notices the presence of an unscheduled visit today, he does nothing more than double-check the clock to make sure he has the time for it.

Five minutes to the second after the first squeak of a floorboard, today's visitor knocks timidly. Archie calls out a cheery _come in_ and doesn't quite manage to hide the double-take when Mayor Mills sidles through the door. "I'm not interrupting, am I?" she asks.

"Of course not," Archie tells her. "My next appointment isn't until six. What can I do for you?"

A nervous chuckle escapes her; the sound is different enough from her usual dry manner to give him a pause. "It's just a—thought, that I've been entertaining against my better judgement."

"Oh?" Archie hates to usher visitors onto the patient couch—it tended to put people on edge—but he makes an offering gesture towards the couch anyway. Mayor Mills sits without comment, her posture so upright that he could probably put a yardstick flush against her back.

"I don't want to waste your time," she says.

"I'll send you an invoice," Archie says; Mayor Mills offers him a faint smile.

"Well." She sits with her hands wringing in her lap for some time; Archie occupies himself with scratching behind Pongo's ears. "I've… always wanted to be a mother," she says at last, choosing each word with great care.

"That's a perfectly reasonable thing to want," Archie says. A faint line appears between her brows.

"Things are a little complicated on that front." Mayor Mills weaves her fingers together and forces herself into stillness. "I can't…"

"Ah." Archie smiles encouragingly at her; he's not sure she notices, since she's resolutely staring at his bookshelves. "There are—other options. Adoption, for example."

She closes her eyes. "I don't want to take a child from their parents," she says.

"Of course not," Archie says. "But there are—unfortunately—no shortage of children whose biological parents aren't, for whatever reason, equipped to give them the care they need." Mayor Mills starts twisting her hands again, and he watches for a while before adding. "I think you'd be a fine mother."

The nervous laughter stutters out of her mouth again, tinged with fear this time. "I wouldn't know where to begin," she whispers, half to herself.

"Most parents don't, as I understand it," Archie says. Tension springs into Mayor Mills's shoulders, around her knees and down her legs. He's seen the signs often enough; she's about ten seconds from fleeing. "It's something to consider," he adds, as she unfolds from the couch and lurches for the exit.

She sends him a fleeting, shaky smile before letting the door close behind her.

* * *

She buys some fabric and makes a hat; the cloth is all wrong and she doesn't have so much as a proper block to work with, but it's something to distract from the wrongness and the monotony. Sometimes she marks herself with her needle; long lines of tiny pinpricks march up and down her arms.

She's deeply engrossed in doing so when Gold invades her flat with barely a passing knock on the open door to announce himself. "You'll want to be careful with that, dearie," he says, eyeing the droplets lining her skin.

"What I do in my spare time is my business," Hatter tells him, tugging her sleeve down and setting the stained needle aside. "What do you want?"

Gold limps closer, reaches into his jacket, and produces a set of photographs, which he tosses into her lap. Hatter flips through them; they're mostly of a young girl with thick glasses and a mess of blonde hair. "Is this her?"

"Emma Swan," Gold murmurs.

Hatter examines one of them more closely; there is a certain resemblance to the illustrations in the book. "She looks like her mother," she says. "Where is she?"

"These were taken in Portland," Gold says. "My sources tell me she's left since then, but following is far easier than finding." He smiles, though his eyes remain inscrutable.

"Who are your sources?" Hatter asks. She doesn't expect an answer, and Gold doesn't disappoint; he merely offers her a faint smirk that says quite clearly he isn't telling. "More importantly, how can we get her here?"

"Let me worry about the details, dearie," Gold says. "These things require time."

Hatter snorts. "Get out of my house."

He leaves the photographs with her.

She hears Morris before she sees him. The Protocol rears up to swallow him as it does the rest of her hallucinations, but she catches it just in time and then whimpers as Morris's hands curl around her neck. "She's not _your _savior, you know," he breathes against her hair; he pulls away and Hatter lunges after him, but it's like trying to catch steam. He smirks at her and settles in the doorway. "You're not part of the curse. She can't break the decree; no one can, except Cora, perhaps."

(_let me_—)

"No," Hatter whispers. It's been so long since the last time she saw him; she's not going to get rid of him early now. The Protocol coils up in the back of her mind, grumbling.

Hatter keeps half an eye on Morris while she examines the pictures and commits the details of Emma Swan's face to memory; after a while, he lets out a disgusted sigh and climbs into the ceiling.


End file.
